Courts

Florida's Systemic Disenfranchisement Of Citizens Is Ruled Unconstitutional

But the state isn't going to just let felons start voting if they can help it, not before the midterms, at least.

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I make a lot of fun of Florida on these pages because… well… the state is an incongruous mix of unreformed Southerners, aging Coastals, and recent immigrants. Florida, like, should not be. And yet it is probably what all of America is heading towards.

I bring this up because, people, myself obviously included, take so many cheap shots at Florida that when the state does something that is absolutely wretched, it’s hard to get people to see it as more than another “Flori-duh” story.

A federal judge just struck down Florida’s scheme for disenfranchising convicted felons and, folks, this is well beyond the normal Florida-level story of stupidity mixed with a light seasoning of corruption and racism. What the state was doing was so wrong that U.S. District Judge Mark Walker had to unload on Florida Governor Rick Scott:

“So the state then requires the former felon to conduct and comport herself to the satisfaction of the board’s subjective — and frankly, mythical — standards,” Walker wrote. “Courts view unfettered governmental discretion over protected constitutional rights with profound suspicion.”

Florida’s plan for allowing convicted felons to regain their voting rights is ridiculous. First, they have to wait five years after they’ve completed their sentence, probation, and paid any restitution for their crimes. I guess five sounded like a nice prime number, but it was apparently picked out of a hat. The felons then have to apply to a four-judge clemency board that can grant them their rights back, or not, based on their sole discretion, subject to veto by the Governor. There is no real “guidance” for the panel. You can imagine how this works out for minority felons versus white felons.

Judge Walker was having none of it. From the Miami Herald:

“Florida strips the right to vote from every man and woman who commits a felony,” Walker wrote. “To vote again, disenfranchised citizens must kowtow before a panel of high-level government officials over which Florida’s governor has absolute veto authority. No standards guide the panel. Its members alone must be satisfied that these citizens deserve restoration. … The question now is whether such a system passes constitutional muster. It does not.”

Walker wrote: “If any one of these citizens wishes to earn back their fundamental right to vote, they must plod through a gauntlet of constitutionally infirm hurdles. No more. When the risk of state-sanctioned viewpoint discrimination skulks near the franchise, it is the province and duty of this Court to excise such potential bias from infecting the clemency process.”

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Rick Scott, who is running for Senate in a race that could determine control of the Senate — and whether Donald Trump gets impeached for all we know — vows to appeal. It is very important to Republicans to suppress votes this cycle. Critically important.

Florida’s lifetime ban on voting by felons is unconstitutional, federal judge rules [Miami Herald]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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